Osama

ARTICLES ABOUT OSAMA BY DATE - PAGE 2

In his new memoir, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates gives an account of the planning and execution of the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He also tells about the immediate aftermath. Addressing the principals gathered in the White House situation room, Gates writes, "I reminded everyone that the techniques, tactics and procedures that the SEALS had used in the bin Laden operation were used every other night in Afghanistan and elsewhere in hunting down terrorists and other enemies.

By Bernard Vaughan NEW YORK, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors on Wednesday indicted a lawyer for Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, for failing to report more than $3 million in income to the Internal Revenue Service. The six-count indictment brought by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office said the income represented unreported legal fees paid to the lawyer, Stanley L. Cohen, between 2005 and 2010. Cohen, 63, was also charged with scheming to defraud New York state tax authorities for failing to report and trying to hide his income, prosecutors said in a statement.

A Michigan gem merchant who claims he tipped the FBI on the location of Osama bin Laden's secret compound in Pakistan eight years before his killing has hired a high-powered Chicago law firm to help him go after the $25 million reward offered for the terrorist's capture. Tom Lee, 63, of Grand Rapids, “accurately reported” to an FBI special agent in 2003 that bin Laden was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, according to a letter sent in August to FBI Director James Comey by an attorney for the Loevy & Loevy firm.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's grand mufti, the highest religious authority in the birthplace of Islam, has urged young Saudis to refrain from fighting in Syria. The kingdom has backed the rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad, publicly calling on the world powers to "enable" Syrians to protect themselves, but is wary that fighters could return home ready to wage war on their own dynastic rulers. Islamists in Saudi Arabia, who follow a puritanical version of Sunni Islam, denounce Assad and his administration as infidels because of their roots in the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has quietly restarted security assistance to Pakistan, U.S. officials said on Sunday, after freezing much of that aid during a period of strained relations beginning with the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. While the move to free up the aid has been underway for some months, it became public as President Barack Obama prepares for a White House meeting on Wednesday with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Relations between the two countries remain tense on major issues, including Pakistani opposition to U.S. drone strikes and Washington's complaints about the ties of the Pakistani intelligence service to militant groups active in Afghanistan.

Only a few months have passed since President Obama last boasted that al-Qaeda is on "the path to defeat." But then, just a few days ago, his State Department issued what it called a "worldwide caution" on "the continuing threat of terrorist actions and violence against U.S. citizens and interests throughout the world." State warned that al-Qaeda is now threatening Americans in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Africa and Central Asia -- practically the entire world.

(SPOILER ALERT: This piece reveals key details about the plot of " Prisoners .") Why is it so often the ambiguous, unresolved movie that generates controversy while the easy, complacent one gets a free pass? To wit: Why does "Prisoners," Denis Villeneuve's self-serious booby-trap of a thriller, cause nary a stir for its pseudo-provocative condemnation of torture, while director Kathryn Bigelow's hard-hitting, tough-minded "Zero Dark Thirty" gets her called names like "torture's handmaiden" ?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration tried on Monday to salvage a military tribunal's conviction of Osama bin Laden's publicist, the latest case to underscore the legal troubles surrounding the tribunal system at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba. Justice Department lawyer Ian Gershengorn urged a U.S. appeals court at a hearing in Washington to affirm the conviction of Ali Hamza al Bahlul, the former publicist and videographer for the al Qaeda leader. Bahlul is serving a life sentence at Guantanamo after a tribunal in 2008 convicted him of conspiracy, material support for terrorism and solicitation of others to commit terrorism.

Does torture work? It is a Bush-era debate that has found Obama-era relevance because of a new movie, "Zero Dark Thirty," in which torture seems to work quite well. The film, an Oscar nominee for Best Picture, is being sold as a fact-based accounting of the 10-year manhunt that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. In it, torture -- the water-boarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, hitting and humiliation the U.S. government once antiseptically dubbed "enhanced interrogation" -- is depicted as integral to the information gathering that allowed the CIA to find him. That depiction has alarmed some observers.